On a Bad Day . . .

. . . my feet are always dirty.

. . . the wet, muddy streets splash all over the backs of my freshly cleaned pants and even as high as the bottom of my kurta and chunni.

. . . the skies open up and rain down on my twenty-minutes-away-from-dry clothes.

. . .my kurtas are too big and I look and feel about as attractive as if I were wearing a paper sack. Actually, a paper sack sounds pretty good.

. . . fire ants hunt out whatever treat I have stashed away to savour between trips to Hyderabad.

. . . the same ants, having devoured my chocolate/sweets/biscuits move on to my toes/legs/arms.

. . . I get locked out of my house at night and have to either spend five minutes trying to wake the owner or scale the walls to the second floor.

. . . my laptop cord has fallen from the outlet during the night and there’s only one hour of charge to last through the next eight hours until power comes back on.

. . . the electricity, which has been on for the last two hours while it was light, goes off now that it is dark and I am in the shower.

. . . someone keeps moving the buckets and jugs I have strategically arranged to catch the 3-4 constant drips in the bathroom. It’s okay, I’m sure the mosquitoes breeding in the puddles on the floor aren’t malarial.

. . . I have to battle a fist-sized spider for use of the bathroom sink.

. . . breakfast is upma for the fifth time in a week.

. . . dinner is bitter gourd, which wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t make me vomit on sight.

. . . the chapatti looks like it was bathed in grease. No really, it’s fine, my arteries could use a little clogging.

. . . the bugs come out in full force and suddenly my dinner looks like I just ground fresh pepper over it. Protein, right?

. . . Gmail, which has been working just fine all day, won’t allow me to access my account only at the moment when I need to meet the deadline for a document.

. . . nobody understands a word I’m saying to them.

. . . I don’t understand a word anyone is saying to me.

. . . my bus is half an hour late but it’s actually okay cause the train is 2 ½ hours late. And that’s okay too, cause I didn’t really need to get anywhere.

Of course there are good days too, this just happens to not be one of them . . .